Hello! My name is Hope Grossman. I am a senior and a history major from Simsbury, Connecticut. I have used art as an outlet my entire life. I prefer 3D mediums, including sculpture and metalwork. I recently constructed a series of dresses out of magazines for a project that explored fashion media’s influence on body image. I have a basic proficiency with Photoshop andI’m excited to delve further into the world of digital media! While art is my favorite hobby, agriculture and liberal politics are my two passions! If I’m not in the library working on a history paper, catch me working on a dairy farm or advocating for women’s rights.
Homework Response 1: Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain
The comic book Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain illustrates the confusing intricacies of intellectual property law and public domain. The comic’s protagonist, a filmmaker named Akiko, questions the applications of copyright law and the fair use doctrine. Akiko’s worries about filming her own documentary and encountering copyright issues made me think a lot about the difficulties that artists, musicians, and filmmakers must go through to ensure compliance to intellectual property laws. The comic book was an eye-opener for me because I had never thought about this issue before.
The examples in the comic book got me thinking about the negatives uses of appropriation that I have encountered throughout pop culture. There are so many examples of cultural appropriation that span across various forms of media. One controversial example of appropriation was Katy Perry’s self-described “homage to Asian Culture” in her 2013 AMA’s performance of “Unconditionally.” The geisha-inspired performance received intense backlash. The Japanese American Citizens League released a statement that said: “The JACL respects the space needed by performance artists to apply their creativity. However, this space does not extend to the perpetuation of racial stereotypes that hold the potential for harm. The thoughtless costuming and dance routines by Katy Perry played carelessly with stereotypes in an attempt to create a Japanese aesthetic.” American popular culture often tries to depict racial groups in edgy or new ways, but unfortunately, it frequently fails to represent accurate portrayals of cultural heritage. Although Katy Perry broke no copyright laws with this incident, she did not think about how this performance was an inappropriate appropriation.
A more appropriate cultural reference is the use of musical sampling. Taylor Swift recently sampled Right Said Fred’s song “I’m Too Sexy” in her song “Look What You Made Me Do.” Swift got copyright rights and complied to the law in order to legally interpolate it. Right Said Fred tweeted praise of the interpolation, saying: “Thank you @taylorswift13 <3 what a marvelous reinvention! #imtoosexy #lookwhatyoumademedo.” The group also confirmed that Taylor Swift had reached out to them about the track, and that they were very honored.
Aside from music, the comic also got me thinking about public domain law. I googled public domain law and stumbled across an interesting article titled “What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2018? Under the Law That Existed Until 1978… Works from 1961.” This article talks about the works that should have entered the public domain in 2018, but under current copyright law, will not become free until 2057. These works include books like Catch-22, The Phantom Tollbooth, and James and the Giant Peach. Movies including Breakfast at Tiffany’s, West Side Story, and The Parent Trap are also included on this list. If these works were in the public domain, we could use them in our own works, just like some of them used earlier works in theirs. I think it is ridiculous that these books and films are still protected. The stringent copyright laws exemplified here restrict the creativity that the public domain breeds.
Remove Objects and Put Them in a Blank Space Next to the Original
Remove Objects and Leave Little Trace
My Choice
Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue
My composite image portrays technology addiction and the alternate reality that technology and social media capture. To start, I photographed an image of my friend's hand and her iPhone, which became the main focus of my picture. Then, I incorporated components from six other images found on the web to complete my piece. I explored many different tools on Photoshop and watched a lot of Youtube tutorials to improve my Photoshop techniques. I put highlights and shadows on different colorized elements to create a sunny and bright effect in the colorized section. I also experimented with puppet warping. I wanted my final image to be technically difficult, but look simple and clean, which I think I achieved. Every aspect of my composite image is a different piece of an image, but I think I successfully incorporated them into one image.
Unedited Images
Step-by-Step Process
Final Composite
Scavenger Hunt Collage
In-Class Cinemagraph Project
Second Cinemagraph
Artworks and Conceptual Strategies
After the Mona Lisa 2, Devorah Sperber (2005)
This is a piece by Devorah Sperber called After the Mona Lisa 2, made in 2005. It is made out of 5,184 spools of thread and aluminum ball chains. The conceptual strategies Sperber used in her piece that I would use for my video are depiction, appropriation, reinterpretation, and using unusual materials. I would also play with distortion in my video.
Sperber writes this about her piece: “When seen with the aid of viewing spheres, distorted views of The Mona Lisa'ssmile mimic "low spatial frequencies" usually seen only with peripheral vision. Unlike the original painting, in which the illusion of the smile is subtle, in my rendition The Mona Lisa's elusive smile appears, changes, and disappears in a dramatic and humorous fashion.”
While Sperber depicts famous artworks through appropriation and distortion, I was thinking I could use the same strategies to depict famous DC landmarks.
Work from Instructions, Sol LeWitt (1971)
This is a series of 10 lithographs by Sol LeWitt called Work from Instructions, made in 1971. LeWitt hired people to execute his instructions for works of art. I would play around with this conceptual strategy and instruct people to create something for my video. LeWitt was not interested in the beauty of the final drawings. He said, “If I give the instructions and they are carried out correctly, then the result is OK with me.” He appealed to viewers’ intellect rather than their sense of beauty. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/sol-lewitt-untitled-from-squares-with-a-different-line-direction-in-each-half-square-1971#)
This is an example of LeWitt’s instructions: “Within a twenty-inch square area, using a black, hard crayon, draw ten thousand freehand lines, of any length, at random.”
For my video, I would disrupt LeWitt’s appeal to intellect. I would film people reading instructions and following them but slowly breaking the rules. People would become more and more disruptive and ignore the directions more and more as the video progressed.
tropos, books, Ann Hamilton (1993)
This is a piece from a series called tropos, books, made by Ann Hamilton in 1993. Hamilton investigated “reading as literal absorption— erasing mechanically reproduced letters with the measured sensory, repetitive acts of the body and adding a new mark of unmaking, or rewriting, the page.” She let each reader choose a book, but chose books without headings, authors, or chapter titles so the reader could not understand what he or she was reading.
I want to play with Hamilton’s strategy of de-contextualization, changing the context of the subject of my video so the viewer doesn’t know the original context
In 1976, Rosalind Krauss wrote The Aesthetics of Narcissism, which is a critique on the disruption that video introduced when it became a medium of art. Krauss argued that the medium of video is incredibly narcissistic, and that narcissism “is so endemic to works of video” (Krauss 50). If Krauss wrote this same article in 2015, in the virtual age, her argument that narcissism is “the condition of the entire genre” would have bared even more weight. In 2015, Krauss’s thesis would not only be about the medium of narcissism in video, but it would also be about how technological achievements and the Internet made video so much more popular. Narcissism as the medium of video has become much more prevalent than it was in 1976 because of platforms like YouTube and Snapchat, which are entirely devoted to the projection of oneself. Krauss wrote that the greatest difference between video and other visual arts is a psychological one. The medium of visual arts, like painting or sculpture, relies on specific, objective material factors, such as “pigment-bearing surfaces; [or] matter extended through space” (Krauss 52). Thus, the medium contains factors that are detached from the artist’s self. On the other hand, Krauss posited that the body, or artist, is centered in video art, “and the human psyche is used as a conduit,” which is very narcissistic (52). “Self-encapsulation – the body or psyche as its own surround” – is the foundation of most video art (53). In 2015, and today, self-encapsulation has become a feature of everyday life because of technological and societal developments. Technological advancements of video-recording devices and software has made video art easier to create. Additionally, narrative has become an essential part of modern self-encapsulation. Although narrative is not prevalent in video art, it is more common. Narrative is incredibly narcissistic, by Krauss’s definition, and is the modern basis of virtual age productions. Platforms like YouTube and other social media sites allow broadcasters to project curated images of themselves to their audiences. In the virtual age, anyone can portray any message that they want through video broadcasting. The virtual age has also blurred a line between which videos are truly art and which are not. When Krauss wrote her article on narcissism and video in 1976, she was in an era when video was not widely accepted as a medium of art. This era of rejection and uncertainty about video is similar to 2015, when the intentions of sites like YouTube were more commonly questioned by society. 1976 and 2015 were both periods where there was uncertainty over the future of role of narcissism in video content. In 1976, and today, Krauss was correct to theorize that the medium of video is narcissism.
Krauss, Rosalind, “The Aesthetics of Narcissism.” The MIT Press, vol. 1, 1976, pp. 50-64.
Hello! My name is Hope Grossman. I am a senior and a history major from Simsbury, Connecticut. I have used art as an outlet my entire life. I prefer 3D mediums, including sculpture and metalwork. I recently constructed a series of dresses out of magazines for a project that explored fashion media’s influence on body image. I have a basic proficiency with Photoshop andI’m excited to delve further into the world of digital media! While art is my favorite hobby, agriculture and liberal politics are my two passions! If I’m not in the library working on a history paper, catch me working on a dairy farm or advocating for women’s rights.
Homework Response 1: Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain
The comic book Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain illustrates the confusing intricacies of intellectual property law and public domain. The comic’s protagonist, a filmmaker named Akiko, questions the applications of copyright law and the fair use doctrine. Akiko’s worries about filming her own documentary and encountering copyright issues made me think a lot about the difficulties that artists, musicians, and filmmakers must go through to ensure compliance to intellectual property laws. The comic book was an eye-opener for me because I had never thought about this issue before.
The examples in the comic book got me thinking about the negatives uses of appropriation that I have encountered throughout pop culture. There are so many examples of cultural appropriation that span across various forms of media. One controversial example of appropriation was Katy Perry’s self-described “homage to Asian Culture” in her 2013 AMA’s performance of “Unconditionally.” The geisha-inspired performance received intense backlash. The Japanese American Citizens League released a statement that said: “The JACL respects the space needed by performance artists to apply their creativity. However, this space does not extend to the perpetuation of racial stereotypes that hold the potential for harm. The thoughtless costuming and dance routines by Katy Perry played carelessly with stereotypes in an attempt to create a Japanese aesthetic.” American popular culture often tries to depict racial groups in edgy or new ways, but unfortunately, it frequently fails to represent accurate portrayals of cultural heritage. Although Katy Perry broke no copyright laws with this incident, she did not think about how this performance was an inappropriate appropriation.
A more appropriate cultural reference is the use of musical sampling. Taylor Swift recently sampled Right Said Fred’s song “I’m Too Sexy” in her song “Look What You Made Me Do.” Swift got copyright rights and complied to the law in order to legally interpolate it. Right Said Fred tweeted praise of the interpolation, saying: “Thank you @taylorswift13 <3 what a marvelous reinvention! #imtoosexy #lookwhatyoumademedo.” The group also confirmed that Taylor Swift had reached out to them about the track, and that they were very honored.
Aside from music, the comic also got me thinking about public domain law. I googled public domain law and stumbled across an interesting article titled “What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2018? Under the Law That Existed Until 1978… Works from 1961.” This article talks about the works that should have entered the public domain in 2018, but under current copyright law, will not become free until 2057. These works include books like Catch-22, The Phantom Tollbooth, and James and the Giant Peach. Movies including Breakfast at Tiffany’s, West Side Story, and The Parent Trap are also included on this list. If these works were in the public domain, we could use them in our own works, just like some of them used earlier works in theirs. I think it is ridiculous that these books and films are still protected. The stringent copyright laws exemplified here restrict the creativity that the public domain breeds.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7941949/taylor-swift-right-said-fred-thank-look-what-you-made-me-do
https://jacl.org/jacl-statement-on-katy-perry-performance
http://infojustice.org/archives/39401
Presence and Absence Exercise
Remove Something Leaving a White Space
Replace Something with a Portion of Another Image
Remove Objects and Put Them in a Blank Space Next to the Original
Remove Objects and Leave Little Trace
My Choice
Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue
My composite image portrays technology addiction and the alternate reality that technology and social media capture. To start, I photographed an image of my friend's hand and her iPhone, which became the main focus of my picture. Then, I incorporated components from six other images found on the web to complete my piece. I explored many different tools on Photoshop and watched a lot of Youtube tutorials to improve my Photoshop techniques. I put highlights and shadows on different colorized elements to create a sunny and bright effect in the colorized section. I also experimented with puppet warping. I wanted my final image to be technically difficult, but look simple and clean, which I think I achieved. Every aspect of my composite image is a different piece of an image, but I think I successfully incorporated them into one image.
Unedited Images
Step-by-Step Process
Final Composite
Scavenger Hunt Collage
In-Class Cinemagraph Project
Second Cinemagraph
Artworks and Conceptual Strategies
After the Mona Lisa 2, Devorah Sperber (2005)
This is a piece by Devorah Sperber called After the Mona Lisa 2, made in 2005. It is made out of 5,184 spools of thread and aluminum ball chains. The conceptual strategies Sperber used in her piece that I would use for my video are depiction, appropriation, reinterpretation, and using unusual materials. I would also play with distortion in my video.
Sperber writes this about her piece: “When seen with the aid of viewing spheres, distorted views of The Mona Lisa'ssmile mimic "low spatial frequencies" usually seen only with peripheral vision. Unlike the original painting, in which the illusion of the smile is subtle, in my rendition The Mona Lisa's elusive smile appears, changes, and disappears in a dramatic and humorous fashion.”
While Sperber depicts famous artworks through appropriation and distortion, I was thinking I could use the same strategies to depict famous DC landmarks.
Work from Instructions, Sol LeWitt (1971)
This is a series of 10 lithographs by Sol LeWitt called Work from Instructions, made in 1971. LeWitt hired people to execute his instructions for works of art. I would play around with this conceptual strategy and instruct people to create something for my video.
LeWitt was not interested in the beauty of the final drawings. He said, “If I give the instructions and they are carried out correctly, then the result is OK with me.” He appealed to viewers’ intellect rather than their sense of beauty.
https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/sol-lewitt-untitled-from-squares-with-a-different-line-direction-in-each-half-square-1971#)
This is an example of LeWitt’s instructions:
“Within a twenty-inch square area, using a black, hard crayon, draw ten thousand freehand lines, of any length, at random.”
For my video, I would disrupt LeWitt’s appeal to intellect. I would film people reading instructions and following them but slowly breaking the rules. People would become more and more disruptive and ignore the directions more and more as the video progressed.
tropos, books, Ann Hamilton (1993)
This is a piece from a series called tropos, books, made by Ann Hamilton in 1993. Hamilton investigated “reading as literal absorption— erasing mechanically reproduced letters with the measured sensory, repetitive acts of the body and adding a new mark of unmaking, or rewriting, the page.” She let each reader choose a book, but chose books without headings, authors, or chapter titles so the reader could not understand what he or she was reading.
I want to play with Hamilton’s strategy of de-contextualization, changing the context of the subject of my video so the viewer doesn’t know the original context
http://www.annhamiltonstudio.com/objects/tropos_books.html.
Homework Response 2: The Aesthetics of Narcissism
In 1976, Rosalind Krauss wrote The Aesthetics of Narcissism, which is a critique on the disruption that video introduced when it became a medium of art. Krauss argued that the medium of video is incredibly narcissistic, and that narcissism “is so endemic to works of video” (Krauss 50). If Krauss wrote this same article in 2015, in the virtual age, her argument that narcissism is “the condition of the entire genre” would have bared even more weight. In 2015, Krauss’s thesis would not only be about the medium of narcissism in video, but it would also be about how technological achievements and the Internet made video so much more popular. Narcissism as the medium of video has become much more prevalent than it was in 1976 because of platforms like YouTube and Snapchat, which are entirely devoted to the projection of oneself.
Krauss wrote that the greatest difference between video and other visual arts is a psychological one. The medium of visual arts, like painting or sculpture, relies on specific, objective material factors, such as “pigment-bearing surfaces; [or] matter extended through space” (Krauss 52). Thus, the medium contains factors that are detached from the artist’s self. On the other hand, Krauss posited that the body, or artist, is centered in video art, “and the human psyche is used as a conduit,” which is very narcissistic (52). “Self-encapsulation – the body or psyche as its own surround” – is the foundation of most video art (53).
In 2015, and today, self-encapsulation has become a feature of everyday life because of technological and societal developments. Technological advancements of video-recording devices and software has made video art easier to create. Additionally, narrative has become an essential part of modern self-encapsulation. Although narrative is not prevalent in video art, it is more common. Narrative is incredibly narcissistic, by Krauss’s definition, and is the modern basis of virtual age productions. Platforms like YouTube and other social media sites allow broadcasters to project curated images of themselves to their audiences. In the virtual age, anyone can portray any message that they want through video broadcasting. The virtual age has also blurred a line between which videos are truly art and which are not.
When Krauss wrote her article on narcissism and video in 1976, she was in an era when video was not widely accepted as a medium of art. This era of rejection and uncertainty about video is similar to 2015, when the intentions of sites like YouTube were more commonly questioned by society. 1976 and 2015 were both periods where there was uncertainty over the future of role of narcissism in video content. In 1976, and today, Krauss was correct to theorize that the medium of video is narcissism.
Krauss, Rosalind, “The Aesthetics of Narcissism.” The MIT Press, vol. 1, 1976, pp. 50-64.